84 New Ukraine Eneolithic sample from late Sredni Stog, near homeland of the Corded Ware culture

Davidski October 2, 2017 at 3:09 am Haha. Thanks for the comedy. Obviously, Corded Ware is not from Cucuteni–Trypillia but from Sredny Stog, which now looks a very good bet for the Proto-Indo-European homeland and had nothing to do with Uralics. Time for another revision of your great work. Haha.

After my first version, findings in Olalde et al. (2017) and Mathieson et al. (2017) supported some of my predictions. Now after my third, their new data also supports another prediction. Because the model is based on solid linguistic and archaeological models. Here is an excerpt from the Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd ed. (pp. 55-56):

At the end of the Trypillian culture, herding/hunting trends intensified, and the agricultural system collapsed, with people moving to the steppe zone, as confirmed by the presence of numerous graves to the south (Rassamakin 1999). At the same time, the Trypillian world absorbed a foreign tradition related to materials of settlement sites of the Dnieper steppes – such as the late Sredni Stog culture –, like cord impressions and burial rites similar to the later Corded Ware culture, marking also the transformation of decors and changes in their interpretation (Palaguta 2007).

The similarity in burial rituals between Yamna and Corded Ware made Gimbutas define a common “Kurgan people”, whose relationship has also been long supported by Kristiansen (Kristiansen 1989; Kristiansen et al. 2017). An equivalence of both burial rites has been, however, rejected (Häusler 1963, 1978, 1983), and it is generally agreed that the Yamna culture did not expand to the north of the Tisza River.

The importance of horse exploitation in Deriivka, in the forest-steppe zone of the north Pontic region along the Dnieper region, during the Middle Eneolithic period (probably ca. 3700-3530 BC), suggests that horses played a significant role in the life of this Sredni Stog community (Anthony and Brown 2003). In its late period (ca. 4000-3500 BC), this culture had adopted corded ware pottery, and stone battle-axes.

However, this [sic] western steppe peoples were mainly hunters (Rassamakin 1999), and the ‘herding skill’ essential for wild horse domestication seems absent (Kuzmina 2003). All this has been confirmed with zooarchaeological evidence and new molecular and stable isotope results, suggesting an absence of horse domestication in territories of the late Sredni Stog culture in the north Pontic steppe (Mileto et al. 2017), before the advent of migrants from the Indo-European-speaking Repin culture.

The new sample described in Mathieson et al. (2017), dated ca. 4200 BC (but within a wide range, 5000-3500 BC) is from a site classified as of late Sredni Stog (although potentially from Post-Mariupol / Kvitjana), a culture of hunters who probably did not breed domesticated horses (even after the period of conquest and dominance of Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chiefs, from Indo-Hittite-speaking early Khvalynsk, who had domesticated horses), and – more importantly – is of R1a-M417 lineage, shows high so-called “Yamna component” in ADMIXTURE, and clusters among Corded Ware samples in PCA approximately a thousand years before this culture’s expansion. Information from the supplementary material:

An Eneolithic cemetery of the Sredny Stog II culture was excavated by D. Telegin in 1955-1957 near the village of Alexandria, Kupyansk district, Kharkov region on the left bank of the river Oskol. A total of 33 individuals were recovered. Based on craniometric analysis (I.Potekhina 1999) it was suggested that the Eneolithic inhabitants of Alexandria were not homogeneous and resulted from admixture of local Neolithic hunter-gatherers and early farmers, possibly Trypillian groups. We report genetic data from one individual: I6561

PCA, Admixture of Ukraine Eneolithic and other samples from Mathieson et al. (2017)

Another individual from Eneolithic Ukraine (of R1b1 xM269 lineage) clusters quite closely with Neolithic samples from the Baltic, which points to the strong connection between both – southern and northern – regions of east-central Europebefore the period of great Chalcolithic expansions, and the potential origin of the spread of R1b (xM269) lineages with the Corded Ware culture.

‘Yamna component’ (in yellow) in the North-West Pontic Steppe and the Balkans, including Eneolithic Ukraine samples

It will be fun to see the mess that certain researchers have made (and will still make in the near future) of their findings coupled with the concept of “Yamna component”, when trying to describe the “proxy ancestral populations” of European Copper Age and Bronze Age cultures… Difficult times ahead for many, after the collapse of the simplistic Yamna -> Corded Ware -> Bell Beaker genetic model laid out since Haak et al. (2015) and Allentoft et al. (2015).

[EDIT 27 September 2017] Not directly related, but here is today’s interesting discussion on Twitter surrounding the ancestral populations of the “Yamnaya component”, for illustration of the discussions to come when this ancestry is divided into different, more precise, older (Neolithic) steppe components, and these in turn shown to contribute to different European and Asian Chalcolithic and Bronze Age cultures:

Rough attempt to understand genetic history of Europe and W. Eurasia. It's tough to get your head around. Comments welcome. pic.twitter.com/lutXFKmluk

Given the variance found in the three samples from Eneolithic Ukraine (comparable to the variance found in east Bell Beaker samples), we may now be getting closer to the precise territory and culture where the Corded Ware culture might have formed, which cannot be much further from the Dnieper-Dniester region before the Yamna expansion to the west ca. 3300 BC, judging from the elevated steppe component.

It seems, because of the proximity of both cultures and the similar dates of their migrations, that the westward expansion of the Yamna culture may have indeed provided an important push (among some strong ‘pull’ forces) for peoples of the expansion of the Corded Ware culture.

So Genetics reinforces the solidest models of Archaeology and Linguistics? Professional academics being mostly right in their careful research, and amateur geneticists playing with software being wrong? Who would have thought… More and more papers help thus shut up naysayers who state (again and again) that new algorithms are here to revolutionise these academic fields.

The expansion of peoples is known to be associated with the spread of a certain admixture component + the expansion and reduction in variability of a haplogroup (i.e. few male lineages are usually more successful during the expansion): Neolithic farmers from the Middle East expanding with haplogroup G2a; Natufian component (Levant hunter-gatherers or later, Neolithic farmers) and haplogroup E southward into Africa; CHG component expansion with haplogroup J; WHG expansion into east Europe with haplogroup R1b; etc.

There were (at least) two main expansion processes involving Proto-Indo-European: one causing the branching off of the language ancestral to Anatolian, and another during the spread of Late Indo-European dialects. Based on this, and on known archaeological models, I have predicted since the first version of the demic diffusion model:

Based on haplogroups found until then in Yamna (R1b-M269), Corded Ware (R1a-M417, especially Z645), and Bell Beaker (R1b-L151):

that mainly R1b-L23 (especially L51) lineages and more steppe admixture would be found in east Bell Beaker – confirmed some two months after my publication by Olalde et al. (2017);

and that mainly R1a-M417 (especially Z645) subclades will be found in Corded Ware samples.

Based on the finding of “Yamna component” in the Corded Ware culture: that this admixture must have come from somewhere else. I pointed out to eastern Europe, including the forest and forest-steppe zone especially in the natural continuum of the Dniester-Dnieper region. Especially after Mathieson et al. (2017), in my second and third versions of the model, I have more specifically suggested a southern origin in the region, nearer to where the CHG ancestry must have come from (the Caucasus and cultures formed in contact with it), according to mainstream archaeological data, i.e. cultures of the North Pontic steppe / steppe-forest. But of course, until more samples are available, more CHG ancestry in other cultures of the Forest Zone cannot be discarded.

For the vast majority of academics, more samples (regionally proportioned) are needed only from early Corded Ware, as we have from Bell Beaker: if they are (as expected) mostly R1a-M417, then everything is clear, and it will finally mean the end for the tiring, now almost ‘traditional’ association R1a – Proto-Indo-European. Some more samples from the potential homeland of the third Corded Ware horizon, most likely Ukraine (Podolia and Volynia regions), nearer to the time of the Corded Ware expansion, would also be great, to locate the actual ancestral population of Corded Ware migrants – recognisable by the main presence of haplogroup R1a-Z645 (formed ca. 3500 BC), and elevated “Yamna component” before the arrival of the Yamna culture…

If, however, early Corded Ware samples of R1b-L23 subclades are found in certain quantity, especially old samples from east-central Europe (excluding Yamna migrants along the Prut), the tricky question of Late Indo-European cultural diffusion will remain: Did Corded Ware peoples adopt a Late Indo-European language from clans of R1b-L23 lineages? That is what Kristiansen and Anthony have been betting for, a cultural diffusion, caused by:

A long-lasting contact, according to Kristiansen (1989,…,2017). He defends that Sredni Stog adopted the language – but obviously not the same culture – from the east, but that it is a genetic and cultural mix from Globular Amphora, Trypillia, and steppe cultures. This has been Kristiansen’s model for almost 30 years, and it follows Marija Gimbutas’ outdated theory of the “Kurgan people”.

A rapid change according to Anthony (2007). He associates the adoption of Pre-Germanic with the domination of Yamna chiefs over Usatovo people, and the adoption of Balto-Slavic by the people from (Corded Ware) Middle Dnieper group because of the technical superiority of neighbouring Yamna herders.

Linguistics, with the growing support of a North-West Indo-European group, points clearly to a European expansion of a community speaking the ancestral language of Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and probably Balto-Slavic. Archaeology, too, showed migration from Yamna only to south-eastern Europe (correcting Gimbutas’ Kurgan model) and later with east Bell Beaker mainly into central, western, and northern Europe.

Even Kristiansen admits that only after the arrival of Bell Beaker in Scandinavia was a linguistic community (i.e. Germanic) formed – although he places the center of gravity in Úněticean influence, and (yet again) a cultural diffusion event into the Danish Dagger period.

Because of more and more data contrasting with old theories, some have elected to develop weak, indemonstrable links, to keep supporting e.g. Gimbutas’ concept of “Kurgan people” in Archaeology, and a sudden, early expansion of all PIE dialects at once in Linguistics. It seems that, after so much fuss about the (misleading) ‘Yamna component’ concept – and so many far-fetched assumptions by amateur geneticists -, the Corded Ware connection will once again hinge on weak, indemonstrable cultural diffusion theories, be it ‘Kurgan peoples’ (including now, of course, Eneolithic cultures of Ukraine) or any culture from eastern Europe that will reveal some close samples to Corded Ware migrants, in terms of PCA, ADMIXTURE, or haplogroup.

So once we find mainly R1a-Z645 in more Corded Ware samples (and this haplogroup and more “Yamna component” in non-Yamna cultures of Eneolithic Ukraine, and potentially Poland or Belarus) we all may finally expect a peaceful acceptance of reality, at least in Genetics? Nope. No siree. Nein. Not then, not ever.

Why? Because some people want their paternal lineage to have lived in their historical region, and spoken their historical language, since time immemorial. It won’t matter if Archaeology, Linguistics, Genetics, etc. don’t support their claims: if they need to use some aspects of admixture, or haplogroups (or a combination of them) from carefully selected samples instead of looking at the whole picture; if they have to support that Indo-Europeans came from a culture different than Yamna, in- or outside of the steppe or forest-steppe, be it the Balkans, Anatolia, Armenia, or the Moon; if their proto-language should then come directly from Indo-Hittite, or from a Germano-Slavonic, or Indo-Slavonic, or Indo-Germanic group, or whatever invented dialectal branch necessary to fit their model, or if they have to support the ‘constellation analogy’ of Clackson, or thousands of years of development for each branch; etc. They will support whatever is necessary.

And this adaptation, obviously, has no end. It’s stupid, I know. But that’s how we are, how we think. We have seen that these sad trends continue no matter what, for decades, and not only regarding Indo-European. Some common examples include:

Indo-Aryan-speaking Indians defending an autochthonous origin of R1a and Indo-European; as well as the ‘opposite’ autochtonous continuity theory of Dravidian-speaking Indians (based on ASI ancestry, haplogroup R2, mtDNA haplogroup M, or whatever is at hand).

Western Europeans defending an autochthonous origin of the R1b haplogroup, with a Palaeolithic or Mesolithic origin, including the language, viz. the recent Indo-European from the Atlantic façade theories (in the Celtic from the West series, by Koch and Cunliffe); the now fading Palaeolithic Continuity Theory; and many other forgotten Eurocentric proposals; as well as the more recent informal hints of a central European/Balkan homeland based on the Villabruna cluster and south-eastern Mesolithic finds, which is at risk of being related to a Balkan origin of Proto-Indo-European…

There is also the ‘opposite’ theory of the autochthonous origin of the Basques, including Proto-Iberians and potentially other peoples like Paleo-Sardinians, based on the previously popular Vasconic-Uralic hypothesis (and an ancient Europe divided into R1b and N1c1 haplogroups), which is still widely believed in certain regions.

Nordic speakers supporting the autochthonous nature of Germanic and haplogroup I1 to Scandinavia.

Armenian speakers delighted to see a proposal of Indo-European homeland in the Armenian highlands, be it supported by glottalic consonants, CHG ancestrty, R1b (xM269) or J lineages…

Greek speakers now willing to support continuity of haplogroup J as a ‘native’ Greek lineage, of people speaking Proto-Greek (and in earlier times PIE), because of two Minoan, and one Mycenaean samples found in Lazaridis et al. (2017).

Even Turks linking Yamna with the expansion of Turkic languages. That one is fun to read, almost like a parody for the rest – substituting “Indo-European” for “Turkic”.

For years, a lot of people – me included (at least since 2005) – believed, because of modern maps of R1a distribution, that R1a and Corded Ware are the vector of Indo-European languages. For those of us who don’t have any personal or national tie with this haplogroup, this notion has been easy to change with new data. For others, it obviously isn’t, and it won’t be.

Modern R1a distribution in Eurasia (Wikipedia, 2008). The typical, simplistic map we relied on in the 2000s to derive wrong conclusions based on Genetics, conclusions which are sadly still alive and kicking…

For all these people, a sample, result, or conclusion from any paper, just dubiously in favour, means everything, but a thousand against mean nothing, or can be reinterpreted to support their fantasies.

The Kossinnian “autochthonous continuity” crap permeates this relatively new subfield of Human Evolutionary Genetics, as it permeated Indo-European studies (first Linguistics, then Archaeology) in its infancy. It seems to be a generalised human trend, no doubt related to some absurd inferiority complex, mixed with historical romanticism, a certain degree of chauvinism, and (falling in the eternal Godwin’s Law of our field) some outdated, childish notion of ‘supremacy’ linked with the expansion of the own language and people.

Such simplistic and popular models are also lucrative, judging by the boom in demand for DNA analysis, which companies embellish with modern fortune tellers (or fortune tellers themselves sell for a price), promising to ascertain your ‘ancestry proportions’ using automated algorithms, so that you don’t have to get lost in complex genetic data and prehistoric accounts, which can’t help you define your “ethnicity”…

Some just don’t want to realize that the spread of prehistoric languages (like Late Indo-European dialects) was a complex, non-uniform, stepped process, devoid of modern romantic concepts, which in genetic terms necessarily included later founder effects and cultural diffusions, so that no one can trace their haplogroup, lineage, family, region, or country to any single culture, language, or ethnic group. The same, by the way, can be said of peoples and countries in historic times.

As I said before, we shall expect supporters of the Kurgan model (and thus the expansion of R1a-Z645 with Yamna) to wait for just one sample of R1a-M417 in Yamna and/or Bell Beaker (which will eventually be found), and just one sample of R1b-M269 in Corded Ware (which will also eventually be found), to blow the horn of victory in this naïve competition against time, general knowledge, and (essentially) themselves.

A sad consequence of how we are is that, because of the obvious influence of these stupid modern ethnolinguistic agendas, because we are not all rowing in the same direction, genetic results and conclusions are still perceived as far-fetched and labile, and thus most archaeologists and linguists prefer not to include genetic results in their investigation. And those who dare to do so, are badly counselled by those who go with the tide, so that their papers become almost instantly outdated.

Glorious Wolf October 19, 2017 at 5:09 am
Although I am not a specialist, for quite some time I have noticed the correlation between Corded Ware Horizon (including Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo-Balanovo) with haplogroup R1a and Satem languages (roughly, I would not include languages such as Armenian, Phrygian, Illyric, etc.). On the other hand there seems to be a correlation between R1b haplogroups, European Languages (Italo-Celtic and possibly Germanic) with Bell Beaker expansion.

I wonder if both, Late Sredny Stog and Repin/Yamna spoke Proto-Indo-European, maybe different dialects of it by the time of their expansion (~3.500 BCE).

In this case, Corded Ware horizon would be more related to Sredny Stog expansion and related to the expansion of Baltic, Slavic, Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches, while Repin/Yamna expansion along Danube would have brought what would become Illyric branch associated with Vucedol culture (possibly imposed over a local population? maybe or coexisting with autochthonous languages?), then further west Italo-Celtic and other “italoid” languages such as Lusitanian associated with Bell Beaker expansion. The presence of Beaker people on territory of western Corded Ware would have brought Proto-Germanic and similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic would be due to long time contact as well as maybe the presence of some similar language from Wester Corded Ware territory.

If this scenario is correct, Proto-Indo-European unity would have to be pushed further in the past and Anatolian branch would probably not fit with Ezero culture.

Carlos Quiles October 21, 2017 at 10:35 am
Yes, the model you propose is indeed possible, and similar models will probably be supported in the future by those supporting a strong and old Indo-Slavic connection, especially those interested in its connection with Y-DNA haplogroups.

But, as you say, that model would push the branching off of Late Indo-European further back in time, either to the Sredni Stog – Early Khvalynsk formation, or at least to an adoption of the language by the Sredni Stog culture from Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chiefs of an Early Khvalynsk origin – which includes a cultural diffusion, difficult to prove, because in terms of haplogroups Sredni Stog does not seem to have been simplified to the predominant R1b subclades of the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe.

The problem here are language guesstimates – which I trust more than the labile glottochronological methods, which have supported almost every model. Guesstimates offer a rather late framework for IE dialect formation: proto-languages can indeed be pushed as far back as you want (after all, we can only know a historic or proto-historic pattern of change, so you can argue for a different pace of change before the known time), but going back thousands of years from Proto-Germanic to Proto-Indo-European does not seem warranted. The same goes for Proto-Balto-Slavic, whether you support a connection with Proto-Indo-Iranian (associated with Sintashta) or with North-West Indo-European (associated with Bell Beaker), or maybe connecting both options through a NWIE Temematic substrate under an Indo-Slavic dialect.
If you mix the current (late) guesstimates with the current trend in favour of an Indo-Uralic family, the relationship between the Sredni Stog (and later Corded Ware) and Khvalynsk (and later Yamna) cultures – originally related in a cultural-historical community – during the Neolithic become clearer. That is just my opinion, of course.

About Anatolian, its origin is still unknown, but I tend to favour a Balkan route, because of the ancestry components (CHG plus or minus EHG) found to date in the Armenian highland, Anatolia, and in the Balkans. Today (unless different data comes from other Chalcolithic regions in Anatolia), only the Chalcolithic Balkan cultures have shown CHG from the steppe at an early time, and no steppe-related haplogroup change has been found in the Caucasus. The connection with Ezero is obviously tentative, as is any homeland of Proto-Greek before its invasion of Greece.

R1a-M417 from Eneolithic Ukraine!!!11

A new version of Mathieson et al. 2017 has just been posted at BioRxiv [LINK]. It includes more samples. One of these new samples is a male from an Eneolithic Sredny Stog culture site on the North Pontic (Ukrainian) steppe who belongs to Y-haplogroup R1a-M417 (ID I6561 from Alexandria in the ADMIXTURE bar graph below). This is huge, obviously with major implications for the peopling of large parts of Eurasia. Why? Because of this. Here’s the new abstract:

Abstract: Farming was first introduced to southeastern Europe in the mid-7th millennium BCE – brought by migrants from Anatolia who settled in the region before spreading throughout Europe. To clarify the dynamics of the interaction between the first farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherers where they first met, we analyze genome-wide ancient DNA data from 223 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 BCE. We document previously uncharacterized genetic structure, showing a West-East cline of ancestry in hunter-gatherers, and show that some Aegean farmers had ancestry from a different lineage than the northwestern Anatolian lineage that formed the overwhelming ancestry of other European farmers. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through southeastern Europe with limited admixture with local hunter-gatherers, but that some groups mixed extensively, with relatively sex-balanced admixture compared to the male-biased hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the North and West. Southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between East and West after farming arrived, with intermittent genetic contact from the Steppe up to 2000 years before the migration that replaced much of northern Europe’s population.

By the way, I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but looking back, some of my comments in the discussion about the first version of Mathieson et al. 2017 were awesome. See here and here.

Three new Yamnaya, all from Ukraine, but sadly all females.

Expected the Mesolithic/Neolithic R1a/R1b in Ukraine, and it would’ve been good to see some Yamnaya males from there, because some are likely to be R1a-M417.

But it’s nice to see that Bulgarian MLBA R1a/U5a sample. Interesting date for R1a to be in the Balkans: 1750-1625 calBCE (3400±30 BP).

…

It can’t be a coincide that all of their Yamnaya samples from Ukraine are females.

I reckon they’re holding the males back for their South Asian paper.

I’m surprised they let the Bulgarian MLBA R1a out of the bag, because that’s a big clue about what we’ll see in BA Ukraine.

Update 20/09/2017: I put together a spreadsheet with the key details for the samples in this paper (click on the image below to open it). I’m not sure which of the individuals are new, because many of the IDs have been changed. A spreadsheet with the original set of samples is located here.

EastPole said…
I was speculating some time ago that Corded Ware didn’t come from Yamnay but from Sredny Stog.
“The expert Dmytro Telegin has divided the chronology of Sredny Stog into two distinct phases. Phase II (ca. 4000–3500 BC) used corded ware pottery which may have originated there, and stone battle-axes of the type later associated with expanding Indo-European cultures to the West. Most notably, it has perhaps the earliest evidence of horse domestication (in phase II), with finds suggestive of cheek-pieces (psalia). “

Of course “an angel’s kiss in spring” is a poetic metaphor. Girls used hops (xъmel/haoma/s
oma) not angel’s kisse.
September 20, 2017 at 1:14 AM

Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ? Can you throw any light on that ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:28 AM

Ric Hern said…
@ EastPole And what about this also from Wikipedia: „…Yuri Rassamakin suggests that the Sredny Stog culture should be considered as an areal term, with at least four distinct cultural elements co-existing inside the same geographical area.” Any thoughts ?
September 20, 2017 at 1:33 AM

EastPole said…
@Ric Hern “And what about Phase 1 of Sredny Stog ?” It could be related to the division into Dereivka I and Dereivka II. Dereivka I population was made of hunter-gatherers and Dereivka II of pastoralists related to Corded Ware Culture. Because of some local differences Sredny Stog was divided into following cultures: Skelanska, Stogovska, Kvitanska and Dereivka by Rassamakin. Let’s wait for aDNA from those cultures before we speculate about them.
September 20, 2017 at 3:14 AM

Davidski said… It makes no difference where M417 originated. The only thing that really matters is that its main expansion was from the Pontic steppe via an Yamnaya-like population. That’s why Corded Ware is 70-100% Yamnaya-like and South Asians have a big dose of Yamnaya-like admixture. September 20, 2017 at 5:03 AM

Davidski said…Ages ago I showed that CHG was already spreading west across Anatolia during the early Neolithic. See here. But it seems that it really started to move west, and even into the Balkans, around 5,000 BC. Check out what they say about that farmer from Krepost, Bulgaria:

In contrast, five southern Greek Neolithic individuals (Peloponnese_Neolithic) – three (plus one previously published 26 ) from Diros Cave and one from Franchthi Cave – are not consistent with descending from the same source population as other European farmers. D-statistics (Supplementary Information Table 2) show that in fact, these “Peloponnese Neolithic” individuals dated to ~4000 BCE are shifted away from WHG and towards CHG, relative to Anatolian and Balkan Neolithic individuals.We see the same pattern in a single Neolithic individual from Krepost in present-day Bulgaria (I0679_d, 5718-5626 BCE ). An even more dramatic shift towards CHG has been observed in individuals associated with the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, 26 and thus there was gene flow into the region from populations with CHG-rich ancestry throughout the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. Possible sources are related to the Neolithic population from the central Anatolian site of Tepecik Ciftlik, 21 or the Aegean site of Kumtepe, 11 who are also shifted towards CHG relative to NW Anatolian Neolithic samples, as are later Copper and Bronze Age Anatolians.
September 20, 2017 at 7:16 PM

EastPole said…What puzzles me greatly is the position Varna and Balkans_Chalcolithic outliers. Assuming that their position on PCA was due to some early migrations from the steppe we can conclude that at the very early age there existed different steppe populations: NO. 1 is like Sredny Stog, NO. 2 is like Yamnaya and NO. 3 is like Yamnaya outlier with a lot of CHG:

September 20, 2017 at 11:20 PM

Rob said…
@ EastPole It’s probably a gradient that’ll fill out with more individuals tested. I’d also add Kumtepe IV to that list. It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites
September 20, 2017 at 11:29 PM

EastPole said…
@Rob “It means that the migration of these „steppe” people, aka north Caucasus or central Eurasians, had begun by 4500 BC, and they had started to arrive at key sites”

If a population similar to late Sredny Stog Dereivka formed somewhere on the steppe as early as 4500 BC then I would guess they are the best candidates for PIE.

September 21, 2017 at 12:06 AM

Rob said…
@ East Pole The old term Sredny Stog is too loose. This R1a-M417 is probably from Kvityana culture, and would date between 4000-3500 BC. This again confirms what I have been saying, & Alberto just did above, some kind of new admixture event was occurring on the east-of -Dnieper steppe and forest steppe at this time, because up until this point the -CHG component is missing in steppe samples, and is probably an extraneous component. (and the curious thing is there is no delay in reaching Varna or Anatolia, at least on an individual level.) West of this , the earlier Suvorovo people and Mikhailovka would be still the older type layer of SHG – Balkan Neolithic mix, as seen by the Ukrainian Neolithics – Eneolithics to date. Now it’s blind guesswork and personal pet-theorism to claim this or that site or sub-region is the PIE. Intsead, it’s very much a interaction thing, with successive waves, with the heavy ANF/SHG being formative for the Balkans, the M417 from middle Dnieper for CWC-related groups, and later the Yamnaya groups, if they’re IE.
September 21, 2017 at 12:52 AM

EastPole said…
@Rob “The old term Sredny Stog is too loose. This R1a-M417 is probably from Kvityana culture, and would date between 4000-3500 BC.”

Alexandria (1 individual)
An Eneolithic cemetery of the Sredny Stog II culture was excavated by D. Telegin in 1955-
1957 near the village of Alexandria, Kupyansk district, Kharkov region on the left bank of the
river Oskol.

EastPole said…
@Rob “Now it’s blind guesswork and personal pet-theorism to claim this or that site or sub-region is the PIE.”

Yes, I am guessing and it is my pet theory but it is not blind. There are reasons to believe that it is a very probable theory. R1a-M417 is a good candidate for PIE marker. Corded Ware Culture is considered to be IE.Here are 12 articles on Corded Ware ornamentation phenomenon in central and eastern Europe:

“Moreover, there are times and places when such ornamentation was extremely frequent. This concerns above all central and eastern Europe from the 5th mill. BC to the 3rd mill. BC. Corded ornamentation in this context even became a type of distinguishing mark, allowing for the creation of a name for one of the important archaeological taxonomic cultures identified in the 3rd mill. BC, the Corded Ware culture (CWC).
BPS-15-1_A_Kośko_M_Szmyt

“Corded ornamentation was observed for the first time in the steppe area between the Dnieper and the Don rivers in the Sredniy Stog culture monuments of the early Eneolithic Age. Artefact ornamentation was represented by imprints of a coiled cord [Kotova 2008]. Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation appeared in the Middle Eneolithic in the monuments of the Dereivka culture and the lower layer of the Mykhailivka settlement.”

Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation was also found in Alexandria/Oleksandriya where we now have R1a-M417:

BPS-15-6_N_S_Kotova

After Dereivka, Tripolye, TRB, Yamnaya and other cultures started to use it too.

Dereivka culture occupied southern part of the forest-steppe region, interacted with Tripolye and is the region where steppe and farmer tradition mixed. I think that PIE were a mixed culture not a pure steppe culture. 4200-3850 BC Alexandria settlement was occupied by Dereivka culture.

Assuming that PIE started to depart after 3500 BC and before that lived on area not exceeding 500000 km2 this is the best candidate for PIE homeland IMO:

September 21, 2017 at 11:10 PM

Rob said…
@ EastPole I don’t think you’re wrong, but that’s my point, it’s seems a tad speculative to argue we can drop pre-expansion PPIE right at the door of Dereivka, or wherever someone else might prefer. Tracing back presumed development of the Corded ware Pot, or an M17 lineage, is a different phenomenon to understanding the intertwining prehistory of sociolinguistics
September 22, 2017 at 1:28 AM

Rob said…
Oh and congrats to R1a bros for finding their roots
September 22, 2017 at 4:16 AM

Alberto said…
@EastPole One thing we’ve learned this year thanks to the aDNA from the north pontic region (Ukraine) is that this area was not the homeland of the Yamnaya-like population that some presume to be PIE.

That area during the Mesolithic and Neolithic was not the home to either EHG or CHG. The native Neolithic people were SHG-like, and they were replaced by this Yamnaya-like population on their migratory way.

So there’s 100% certainty that even if this Yamnaya-like population carrying R1a-M417 and R1b-L23 was PIE, the North Pontic region was not their homeland. They just entered Europe through that region.

The possible origin of such population can be:

– The North Caucasus – The North Caspian region – Central Asia?

I always favoured Central Asia, but no aDNA from there make it difficult to guess.
September 22, 2017 at 4:40 AM

Davidski said…
The possible origin of such population can be:

– The North Caucasus
– The North Caspian region
– Central Asia?

I always favoured Central Asia, but no aDNA from there make it difficult to guess. Nonsense.

The relevant mixture event between EHG and CHG took place on the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe.
September 22, 2017 at 4:49 AM

Davidski said…Much of Eastern Europe and Siberia were part of the same ecosystem back then, and for foragers that’s more important than distance. That’s because foragers can move great distances, usually when following prey, but they have a very hard time moving from one ecosystem, to which they’re adapted, to another, to which they’re not. But I doubt that EHG originated near Lake Baikal. Both WHG and EHG look like a population that formed after the LGM in Europe and maybe Western Siberia from a mixture of European and ANE foragers. The ANE foragers were probably migrants from around Lake Baikal.

If ancient DNA shows the presence of EHG around Lake Baikal during the Mesolithic and/or Neolithic, then they will be migrants from the west.
September 22, 2017 at 6:12 PM

Davidski said…The Mesolithic/Neolithic Ukrainian foragers are not SHG, nor are they derived from SHG. They just have a similar ratio of WHG/EHG ancestry. There is no R1b or R1a in any SHG samples tested to date, but plenty of R1b and R1a in Baltic, Balkan, Russian and Ukrainian foragers with zero Near Eastern ancestry.
September 23, 2017 at 5:45 AM

Davidski said…The Northern Germany scenario isn’t possible, let alone plausible. However, what is possible and plausible is that R1a-M417 is native to the Dereivka region, because we already have Mesolithic and Neolithic R1a from there. And a realistic way to explain the Yamnaya-like genetic structure of the M417 male is via the generally accepted cultural and economic contacts with Khvalynsk and female exogamy. His mtDNA is H2a1a, while the mtDNA of the R1b Khvalynsk guy is H2a1, so that fits.
September 25, 2017 at 3:53 AM

Those 2 populations cannot be one and the same, neither can one be derived from the other. Female exogamy won’t make it. Certainly not in that timespan or in any realistic amount. The first population (who were food gatherers, despite the „neolithic” label) was replaced by the second one (who were food producers). Don’t make complicated what is simple.
September 25, 2017 at 4:14 AM

Davidski said…@Alberto You’re making assumptions out of thin air, and ignoring the long posited links between Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk. There’s nothing in those ancestry proportions that you posted that prevents the formation of a Corded Ware-like population at Dereivka during the Eneolithic.

R1a has a long presence in the area, and the only thing that changes is the mtDNA, from strictly U4 and U5 clades to more southern clades, like J2 and the H2 that is seen in Khvalynsk and common in later steppe groups. And keep in mind that lots of population movements, even if sex biased, can change the genetic structure of small groups very quickly.
September 25, 2017 at 4:24 AM

Davidski said… Well, the Sredny Stog M417 guy is very similar to Yamnaya, and considering that some early Corded Ware look basically 100% Yamnaya, I wouldn’t argue now that associating the „Yamnaya” genetic component with PIE was a bad idea. September 26, 2017 at 2:38 AM

Rob said… Yes I agree, the genetic component which formed / appeared (?) in the steppe c 4000BC (=before Yamnaya) can be linked to the dispersal of IE into Europe September 26, 2017 at 2:49 AM

Davidski said… Not only Europe. Definitely also South Asia and probably Armenia. September 26, 2017 at 2:57 AM

Ric Hern said… A while back someone posted a link about an Archaeological paper which shows that Sredny Stog spread into Khvalynsk territory. September 26, 2017 at 3:51 PM

Davidski said…
Well, the Sredny Stog M417 guy is very similar to Yamnaya, and considering that some early Corded Ware look basically 100% Yamnaya, I wouldn’t argue now that associating the „Yamnaya” genetic component with PIE was a bad idea.
September 26, 2017 at 2:38 AM

(…) In its western range, it was succeeded by the Catacomb culture (2800–2200 BC); in the east, by the Poltavka culture (2700–2100 BC) at the middle Volga. These two cultures were followed by the Srubna culture (18th–12th century BC). (…)

Romulus said…
Maybe the CHG in ANE is some sort of Basal CHG/WHG (YHG IJ) that came along with the affinity that Mal’ta Boy shares with WHG? Along with the Venus figurines from Eastern Gravettian.
February 8, 2016 at 10:43 AM

George Okromchedlishvili said…
There is no CHG in ANE. Otherwise it would be more distant from East Asians and closer to Africans than WHG. This is not the case
February 8, 2016 at 11:21 AM

Rob said…
Chad is correct. Only older studies thought Mal’ta is ‚Gravettian’. Now, the Gravettian is seen to be only within Europe, and mal’ta is its own culture – Malta- Buret..
February 8, 2016 at 8:45 PM

Davidski said…
This is very interesting, although hardly surprising. Eight of the Anatolian farmers help to produce a stronger ANE signal in Kotias than the rest.

I’d say the reason they help to produce a stronger ANE signal in Kotias is because they’re more basal and less ANE. If so, what this means is that at least some Anatolian farmers already had CHG and even ANE admixture, but the differences between them are so subtle that it’s not possible to confirm this directly with D-stats. Btw, Krefter, I don’t know. Need to think about it.
February 9, 2016 at 6:19 AM

Davidski said…Matt, As you say, the stats aren’t significant, but they might reflect shared ancestry between Kotias and East Asians to the exclusion of Anatolian farmers. If Kotias was less basal or Anatolian farmers more basal, the stats might well be significant. By the way, I’ve got solid evidence of CHG admixture in at least some Anatolian farmers. I’ll post it later today.
February 9, 2016 at 1:02 PM

Abstract
We extend the scope of European palaeogenomics by sequencing the genomes of Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old, 1.4-fold coverage) and Mesolithic (9,700 years old, 15.4-fold) males from western Georgia in the Caucasus and a Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,700 years old, 9.5-fold) male from Switzerland. While we detect Late Palaeolithic–Mesolithic genomic continuity in both regions, we find that Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) belong to a distinct ancient clade that split from western hunter-gatherers ∼45 kya, shortly after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe and from the ancestors of Neolithic farmers ∼25 kya, around the Last Glacial Maximum. CHG genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders who migrated into Europe ∼3,000 BC, supporting a formative Caucasus influence on this important Early Bronze age culture. CHG left their imprint on modern populations from the Caucasus and also central and south Asia possibly marking the arrival of Indo-Aryan languages.

Scandinavian admixture
This admixture represents relatively recent Scandinavian admixture (less than 2,000 years). During the Migration period, Germanic tribes that originated in Scandinavia would have carried more of it than North German and Dutch tribes like the Anglo-Saxons, Franks and Lombards. Places settled by the Vikings tend to have slightly higher percentages.

Distribution of the Northwest European admixture in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Northwest European admixture

Note that the ‚West European’ admixture was renamed ‚Northwest European’ on Eupedia, as it fits better the overall distribution of this admixture. This admixture was the main component of Mesolithic Europeans (including in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe), making up about two thirds of their genome. It was designed to correlate with the present distribution of haplogroup R1b-L51, representing essentially the Italic, Celtic and Germanic branches of the Indo-Europeans. When merged with the East European admixture below it should correspond roughly to the WHG map above.

“An alternative hypothesis is that the ultimate homeland of Proto-Indo-European languages was in the Caucasus or in Iran. In this scenario, westward movement contributed to the dispersal of Anatolian languages, and northward movement and mixture with EHG was responsible for the formation of a “Late Proto-Indo European”-speaking population associated with the Yamnaya Complex. While this scenario gains plausibility from our results, it remains possible that Indo-European languages were spread through southeastern Europe into Anatolia without large-scale population movement or admixture.”

(…) Co byś mi odpowiedział, bo Mathieson napisał tak:
“An alternative hypothesis is that the ultimate homeland of Proto-Indo-European languages was in the Caucasus or in Iran. In this scenario, westward movement contributed to the dispersal of Anatolian languages, and northward movement and mixture with EHG was responsible for the formation of a “Late Proto-Indo European”-speaking population associated with the Yamnaya Complex. While this scenario gains plausibility from our results, it remains possible that Indo-European languages were spread through southeastern Europe into Anatolia without large-scale population movement or admixture.” (…)

R1a-M417 in 5000-3500BC Eneolithic Ukraine

Polako 2017-09-23, 22:38 #1

I’m guessing everyone here missed this joyous occasion, but yeah, this pretty much solves, or rather stamps, the ultimate origin of all of the groups rich in M417, like Corded Ware, Balts, Slavs, Indo-Iranians, Scandinavians (in large part), probably the Tarim Basin mummies, maybe Tocharians, etc. It was on the Western steppe. See Sredny Stog culture sample Eneolithic Ukraine I6561 in the spreadsheet here. The preprint in question is here. This individual is Yamnaya-like, but he precedes Yamnaya by at least a few hundred years, which makes sense, considering that Sredny Stog is one of the Eneolithic groups implicated in the formation of Yamnaya, and probably early Proto-Indo-European. Also, he has extra forager ancestry compared to Yamnaya, and a fair whack of European farmer admixture, which means that if we use this sample to model modern North and East Europeans, the steppe ancestry ratio should be much higher than 50% now.

Question: was this as much of an emotional moment for you as it was for me?

EliasAlucard 2017-10-02, 16:39 #5
I’ll have to read the paper first, before I can give my 2 cents on it. However, this means that R1a-M417 is a Steppe marker, if true. It could also mean that R1a-Z93+ migrated from the steppe, but I’m not so sure about that. What’s the pigmentation of this aR1an bloke? Also, Yamnaya was the maximum extent of the PIE urheimat, i.e., an ‚imperial expansion’ of some sort, right before the major migrations started. Obviously before the domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel, PIE speakers were far more limited in geography. Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk and similar archaeological regions, should be better territories for the PIE urheimat. Anyway, if this R1a-M417 guy is genetically very identical to modern Balto-Slavs and Germanics, then the only rational conclusion is that modern northern and eastern Europeans are of mostly proto-Indo-European ancestry, which would be quite remarkable.

EliasAlucard 2017-10-04, 17:50 #6
Average date for specimen I6561 is 6200 years ago. That’s perfectly in line with the estimated age of the proto-Indo-European language by both JP Mallory and David W. Anthony, which was estimated to have been spoken between 4,500 BC and 2,500 BC. And R1a-M417+ that early, means M417 was around from the very start in the early stages of rhe PIE language and at the right place. This begs the question, if all the R1b found in Yamnaya, actually spoke PIE or if they got Indo-Europeanized, or if they were simply another group/tribe of PIE folks. If not PIE, it’s very likely that the R1b tribe spoke a language closely related to PIE (perhaps the ancestor to proto-Anatolian?), and that sooner or later they shifted to PIE. Nonetheless, Sredny Stog showing up R1a-M417 isn’t surprising. Clearly Corded Ware came from western Ukraine. What’s interesting is how genetically related Sredny Stog was to Yamnaya, because Yamnaya expanded into Sredny Stog territory. We’ll never know who spoke PIE first, or if Yamnaya language shifted Sredny Stog to PIE or vice versa, but it’ll be interesting to see how the gene flow went.

Polako 2017-10-04, 20:55 #7
I don’t think Corded Ware came from Western Ukraine. There’s too much farmer and Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) stuff already around the Dnieper for that to be the Corded Ware homeland. Corded Ware folks are sometimes as eastern as Yamnaya. The burial site of this M417 guy is actually on the Ukrainian/Russian border (the coordinates in the linked paper are wrong). The site is Alexandria on this map.

In large part he’s like Yamnaya and the earlier Khvalynsk people. So it seems like there was a population in that part of the steppe that gave rise to Khvalynsk, Sredny Stog and Yamnaya. These were no doubt the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and they probably carried various clades of R1, as well as some local steppe I2a, and some of these lineages became very common, or even fixed, as they split into clans, due to founder effects and patrilocality.

EliasAlucard 2017-10-04, 22:36 #8
I thought you said he was genetically more like Corded Ware than like Yamnaya? In any case, while I personally don’t have much doubt that all of Yamnaya was PIE speaking territory, it must be understood that Yamnaya represents a cultural horizon that was horse riding and wheel utilizing. Yamnaya was basically the maximum expansion before the major Indo-European migrations to the rest of Europe began, and basically an Indo-European proto-empire, so to say (they were illiterate and lacked architecture and so on, so Yamnaya was technically speaking not a civilization and not a proper empire either). That begs the question if the various tribes in Yamnaya always spoke proto-Indo-European or some variety of PIE, even before the expansion of PIE language/culture to the Yamnaya borders. Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk or Samara, smaller cultural horizons like that, are better candidates for the original PIE root culture, or original core PIE heartland so to say.

Would you for example say that PIE was spoken from Samara to Mariupol before the Yamnaya era? That’s of course a possibility but I can’t say I’d bet on it (it’s a too large/wide territory for a single language family to form in sedentary times). I mean it’s possible that Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk, Cucuteni-Tripolye and so on, were all PIE speakers, and that Yamnaya simply represented a geographic unification of a linguistically cohesive territory. PIE could after all have been a daughter language to R1 descended ANE settlers who migrated from Siberia to Ukraine, and settled down all over Ukraine and souther Russia, and mixed with the locals, who at least carried Y-DNA I2. I1 Might also have been native to the the Steppe, I wouldn’t be surprised if I1 pops up there in the ancient DNA record. Some minor Q clades should also have come along with the R1 tribe, from Siberia. Anyway, you have any data on his pigmentation genotypes?

Polako 2017-10-04, 23:05 #9
Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post
I thought you said he was genetically more like Corded Ware than like Yamnaya?
He is, but some Corded Ware individuals are more similar to Yamnaya than to him. So it looks like Corded Ware came from a fairly wide area and a population that ranged in terms of genetic structure from this Sredny Stog guy to Yamnaya Samara.

Yamnaya was basically the maximum expansion before the major Indo-European migrations to the rest of Europe began, and basically an Indo-European proto-empire, so to say (they were illiterate and lackef architecture and so on, so Yamnaya was technically speaking not a civilization and not a proper empire either). That begs the question if the various tribes in Yamnaya always spoke proto-Indo-European or some variety of PIE, even before the expansion of PIE language/culture to the Yamnaya borders. Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk or Samara, smaller cultural horizons like that, are better candidates for the original PIE root culture, or original core PIE heartland so to say.
Yamnaya was Late PIE, and it may have only been a part of the Late PIE horizon. It really depends on where Corded Ware came from; if from Yamnaya, then Yamnaya was Late PIE, if from a closely related group, like, say, late Sredny Stog, then Yamnaya was just a part of Late PIE. Ancient DNA will work this out soon.

Would you for example say that PIE was spoken from Samara to Mariupol before the Yamnaya era?
Yes, I think that was the case. Ancient DNA shows that there was a highly mobile population expanding on the steppe already during the Eneolithic. It was Yamnaya-like, but much earlier, giving rise, at least in part, to Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk. These had to be the very early Proto-Indo-Europeans.

I mean it’s possible that Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk, Cucuteni-Tripolye and so on, were all PIE speakers, and that Yamnaya simply represented a geographic unification of a linguistically cohesive territory.Cucuteni-Tripolye is totally out of the picture based on their DNA. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the ancestors shared by Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk. Yamnaya is just an early daughter branch.

Anyway, you have any data on his pigmentation genotypes?
Nope.

EliasAlucard 2017-10-05, 00:23 #10
Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
He is, but some Corded Ware individuals are more similar to Yamnaya than to him. So it looks like Corded Ware came from a fairly wide area and a population that ranged in terms of genetic structure from this Sredny Stog guy to Yamnaya Samara.
Oh okay. But if he is genetically more like Corded Ware and being that he was from western Yamnaya, and Samara being located in eastern Yamnaya, two scenarios are possible here:

1) Either western Yamnaya had more indigenous admixture from continental/central/northern Europe very early on, like from the get-go of the formation or earliest standardization of the PIE language.

2) Or Samara (eastern Yamnaya so to say) didn’t contribute as much genetically to Corded Ware as the Alexandria/Mariupol inhabitants did. And then later on, when Corded Ware descendants from western Yamnaya remigrated/expanded east, to Andronovo and so on, and became the Scythians, they eventually mixed with the Samara folks, and that’s why Iron Age Scythians cluster a bit closer to Corded Ware than Yamnaya does, in this map:

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
Yamnaya was Late PIE, and it may have only been a part of the Late PIE horizon. It really depends on where Corded Ware came from; if from Yamnaya, then Yamnaya was Late PIE, if from a closely related group, like, say, late Sredny Stog, then Yamnaya was just a part of Late PIE. Ancient DNA will work this out soon.
I’m sure ancient DNA will give the final last clues to the puzzle. However, it’s important to understand the laws of linguistics: a single, cohesive language in prehistoric, sedentary times (i.e., before horse/wheel), cannot take form and maintain mutual intelligibility over such a large region as Yamnaya. That’s why Yamnaya can only represent a mobile, horse riding culture.

If you look at for example ancient Semitic languages, Israel and pre-Carthage Phoenicia represented one branch and its dialects (Canaanite), Syria represented Aramaic, pre-imperial Assyria and Babylonia represented Akkadian, and so on. It’s possible that there were early, various branches of PIE in western and eastern Yamnaya, but if so, Yamnaya must have led to standardization/homogenization of PIE speech, similar to how Latin through the Roman Empire replaced Celtic in France and Iberia. Otherwise we’d have two different Indo-European language families today, and that’s not the case; IE does represent a single language family.

Of course some linguists have argued that PIE might be a „hybrid language”, so who knows. But the point is, and I stress this, Yamnaya is too wide a territory, for a single language family in ancient times, to have taken form. Genetics cannot change this. The inhabitants from Samara to Mariupol may have been very genetically homogeneous and all, doesn’t matter. Before the invention of the wheel and the domestication of the horse, mobility was limited over such a wide territory, and mutual intelligibility would have been difficult to maintain over a few thousand years. That’s not to say that linguistic differences on the scale of Indo-European and Uralic would have arisen, but for sure we’d have something like two major divisions of Indo-European branches (and by that I mean a significantly bigger division than Centum-Satem).

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
Yes, I think that was the case. Ancient DNA shows that there was a highly mobile population expanding on the steppe already during the Eneolithic. It was Yamnaya-like, but much earlier, giving rise, at least in part, to Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk. These had to be the very early Proto-Indo-Europeans.I’d say that PIE was basically an ANE descendant, and an early ancestral variety of PIE came from the north-east (Siberia), and given that R1a-M420 was found in Neolithic Karelia, it’s questionable where these early ANE settlers settled down first. In that context, Samara or Khvalynsk is a good bet, since it’s a bit further north compared to Alexandria. Of course in such a scenario, it can’t be ruled out that they kept colonizing further south-west, all the way to Mariupol, but Khvalynsk should represent an earlier settlement of ANE.

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
Cucuteni-Tripolye is totally out of the picture based on their DNA.
Why, too „Old Europe”?

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the ancestors shared by Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk. Yamnaya is just an early daughter branch.
Yeah makes sense.

Polako 2017-10-05, 01:54 #11
Quote Originally Posted by EliasAlucard View Post
Oh okay. But if he is genetically more like Corded Ware and being that he was from western Yamnaya, and Samara being located in eastern Yamnaya, two scenarios are possible here:

1) Either western Yamnaya had more indigenous admixture from continental/central/northern Europe very early on, like from the get-go of the formation or earliest standardization of the PIE language.
Ukrainian and especially Bulgarian Yamnaya do show early farmer admixture from the west, just like this M417 Sredny Stog guy, and yet some Corded Ware individuals don’t, including one that belongs to M417.

2) Or Samara (eastern Yamnaya so to say) didn’t contribute as much genetically to Corded Ware as the Alexandria/Mariupol inhabitants did.
I don’t think Samara and Kalmykia Yamnaya contributed anything to Corded Ware, because they’re mostly R1b-Z2103, and Corded Ware lacks it.

And then later on, when Corded Ware descendants from western Yamnaya remigrated/expanded east, to Andronovo and so on, and became the Scythians, they eventually mixed with the Samara folks, and that’s why Iron Age Scythians cluster a bit closer to Corded Ware than Yamnaya does.It’s yet to be seen whether Andronovo and Scythians are from Corded Ware or, one way or another, from the same steppe population that gave rise to Corded Ware, because we have an Andronovo clone from Middle Bronze Age Bulgaria with R1a-Z93, and there’s no Z93 in any Corded Ware to date, so this guy may have come from the steppe rather than former Corded Ware territory.

I’m sure ancient DNA will give the final last clues to the puzzle. However, it’s important to understand the laws of linguistics: a single, cohesive language in prehistoric, sedentary times (i.e., before horse/wheel), cannot take form and maintain mutual intelligibility over such a large region as Yamnaya. That’s why Yamnaya can only represent a mobile, horse riding culture.This wasn’t such a big area; nowhere near as big as Yamnaya. It just seems like there was a population living around the Don River which gave rise to or contributed to Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk, and then Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk kept in close touch anyway, so I don’t see any issues there.

I’d say that PIE was basically an ANE descendant, and an early ancestral variety of PIE came from the north-east (Siberia), and given that R1a-M420 was found in Neolithic Karelia, it’s questionable where these early ANE settlers settled down first. In that context, Samara or Khvalynsk is a good bet, since it’s a bit further north compared to Alexandria. Of course in such a scenario, it can’t be ruled out that they kept colonizing further south-west, all the way to Mariupol, but Khvalynsk should represent an earlier settlement of ANE.
By far the oldest R1a is from near the Dnieper in Ukraine (>10,000 calBP), and ANE was already present further west than that during the Upper Paleolithic, hence the R1b in Villabruna. So I wouldn’t focus too much on ANE.

PIE was first spoken around 5,000-4,000 BC based on the most reliable dates, and this is probably about the time when the Yamnaya-like genotype started to form on the steppe, probably around the Don. Then the ancestors of the Anatolians moved out and Late PIE formed. Like I say, Yamnaya may have been the Late PIE population, or only one of them.

Why, too „Old Europe”?
They’re just pretty normal early farmers.

Arch Hades 2017-10-05, 04:16 #12
PIE was first spoken around 5,000-4,000 BC based on the most reliable dates, and this is probably about the time when the Yamnaya-like genotype started to form on the steppe, probably around the Don. Then the ancestors of the Anatolians moved out and Late PIE formed. Like I say, Yamnaya may have been the Late PIE population, or only one of them. I don’t think PIE can be much earlier than 4,000 BC. And that’s very early PIE…late PIE or ‚classical’ PIE needs to incorporate the Wheel since it’s so strongly reconstructed in the daughter languages from Italic all the way to Indo-Aryan, and according to Mallory it’s the succeeding Yamnaya culture that first used wheeled vehicles on the steppe.

The general picture of the Pit-grave economy is varied and dependent on the natural conditions in which its populations found themselves. In the major river valleys, where agricultural soils and forested environment provided the necessary basis for mixed farming settlements, the Pit-grave culture appears to have followed such an economy. Nevertheless, the increased development of stockbreeding, especially the utilization of both the sheep and domestic horse, assisted in the expansion of human settlement out from the river valleys into the deep steppe. Another obvious factor in the development of mobile economies was the invention of wheeled vehicles.

„Wagons are first attested in the Pontic-Caspian during the Pit-grave period. Quite numerous remains of wheels, and even some entire wagons, have been recovered from Pit-grave burials.

So IMO Sredny Stog spoke PIE but not late/classical PIE which is the immediate ancestor of all the daughter IE groups except possibly Anatolian.

Arch Hades 2017-10-05, 04:28 #13
If we were to use this Sredny Stog sample as an proxy for PIE ancestry this would also inflate ‚PIE admixture’ percentages for Southern Europe too. Because no longer could all the Neolithic farmer ancestry in Southern Europe be thought of as completely pre IE. It would mean that Anatolian Neolithic farmers played a minor but significant role in the formation of PIE speakers too. Perhaps Sredny Stog formed when EEF farmer Cucuteni-Trypillian culture bearers came into contact with Khvalynsk. Mainland Greece and Northern Italy could score up to 35-40%..up from the 25% or so they score now…Northern Europe would go up to a staggering 75% or even more. I dunno, but it seems to me, from the earliest stages of PIE..IE speakers were always changing.

EliasAlucard 2017-10-05, 23:01 #14
Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
I don’t think PIE can be much earlier than 4,000 BC.
PIE is of course older than 4,000 BC. The dating of PIE is based on the event of divergence, i.e., the dispersal of various PIE speaking groups; when, where, why and how.

If all Germanic languages, or Indo-European languages for that matter, went extinct, Icelandic would be older than 1,000 years. The reason why Icelandic is roughly a millennia old, is because that’s around the time when Vikings settled down in Iceland. However, Icelandic being a Germanic and ultimately an Indo-European language, has a much older history than 1,000 years, it’s just that the age of Icelandic is counted from its separation from the continental Scandinavian language, which in turn are dated based on their separation from other Germanic languages, and so on.

So too, is PIE dated based on when the original PIE community split. It split because of migrations, much in part, because of higher mobility (wheel/horses).

But of course if we go too far back, the ancestral language to PIE, sounded differently and very likely also had different grammar, morphology and vocabulary. So the formation of classical PIE most likely took place between 4,500 BC and 2,500 BC. After that, and especially from 2,000 BC, we see early dialects of PIE that eventually evolved into branches like Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian and so on.

Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
So IMO Sredny Stog spoke PIE but not late/classical PIE which is the immediate ancestor of all the daughter IE groups except possibly Anatolian.
Yeah. This is why it’s impossible to say much about what language they spoke, or what kind of PIE they spoke, based on genetics. What can be gathered from this Sredny Stog guy, is his genetics, and how well his genetics matches with modern IE speaking populations, and how well the archaeological site of his location matches with PIE correlated ancient cultures, and so on.

But if he or the Samara blokes spoke PIE, that’s more difficult to answer. It’s very likely that I6561 spoke PIE or some variety of PIE, but we can’t really know based on genetics alone, because language isn’t encoded in genes.

Personally I’m curious to see if they’ll find R1a in Samara, or at least more common European R1b clades than what Haak et al. found in 2015. If western Yamnaya was mostly R1a and eastern Yamnaya was mostly R1b, then it’s questionable which side spoke PIE and which group Indo-Europeanized/language shifted the other group, or if they both spoke PIE, and that eastern Yamnaya somehow ended up colonizing western Europe whereas western Yamnaya ended up colonizing eastern Europe, which would be ironic geography

„Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.”

EliasAlucard 2017-10-06, 22:50 #16
Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
Anthony and Ringe 2015 of course disagree with that. They date Archaic PIE to 4,000 BC.
Why are you stressing the date of their study? I ask of course, because in past discussions with your crackpot mentors ‚Crimson Guard’ and „Racial Reality”, they made a big deal out of Mallory 2013 (or whenever it was, it was fairly recent) being more uncertain about the Kurgan theory, compared to Mallory 1989, and this they heavily emphasized that the Kurgan theory was totally wrong because if Mallory in the 2010s is doubtful of the Kurgan theory, then everything about the Kurgan theory must be false, as if the Kurgan theory rests on Mallory alone. That’s a misunderstanding of how science works. More recent research can of course be more accurate thanks to newer studies and technology available to research old hypotheses and so on. However, Colin Renfrew in the 1980s was not more accurate than Vere Gordon Childe in the 1930s, in regards to the proto-Indo-European urheimat.

So you stressing that their study is from 2015 and therefore by default more accurate, is a nonsense argument. It might be more accurate, but whether it is or isn’t, rests on the methodology they’re using now, if it’s a better methodology than past linguistic models. There’s been plenty of linguistic models used to date PIE, many of them have been severely flawed (like the Swadesh list, glottochronology and similar methods).

In any case, David W. Anthony is not a linguist and he has no particular expertise in linguistics or genetics. He’s basically a horse breeder who became fascinated by the domestication of the horse, and began doing research on the topic, which eventually lead him to write a book on the original Indo-European homeland (because while the Botai culture might be a good candidate, it’s most likely that the proto-Indo-Europeans domesticated the horse). His Horse, Wheel, Language book is fairly well researched, and he’s been given a lot of help from various linguists and archaeologists on the various statements he makes in that book. JP Mallory is an actual archaeologist however, but not a linguist, but I’d say Mallory has a better understanding of linguistics than Anthony does. Don Ringe is a linguist, but in any case, that study you posted a picture of, is not really in disagreement with anything I said (the picture even has the date 4,500 BC as the starting point for PIE). Do you really believe that picture indicates that the emergence of Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic and Germanic, occured in 4,000 BC? If you do, you besta check yo’self, son.

PIE is dated between 4,500 BC to 2,500 BC. That means that 6,500 years ago, is the oldest maximum extent PIE might have existed, and younger than 4,500 years ago, it’s very unlikely that PIE was around. We know this thanks to the linguistic evidence, based on the archeological record. That’s why and how PIE is dated; the age of PIE is not based on flawed linguistic models, and if you ignore the linguistic evidence, you get either Renfrew or Dienekes-style nonsense.

What this means is that if PIE would have remained to let’s say, 1,500 BC, it’s very likely that we’d find clay tablet documents written in PIE. So far nothing like that; no evidence of written PIE, and by 1,900 BC, we see early Hittite documents. Of course proto-Anatolian is much older than that, so PIE should have died out by at least a few hundred years before Hittite was documented (some time is required before proto-Anatolian emerged and branched into Hittite, Lydian, Luwian and so on). At the same time, a language cannot be too old, to be the same language. You go too far back in time, and even if it’s the parent/ancestral language, it will be unrecognizable.

Now obviously PIE in 4,500 BC wasn’t mutually intelligible with PIE in 2,500 BC; no language is intelligible for that long (Latin 2,000 years ago and modern Romance speakers today, is a good example). But between 4,500 BC and 2,500 BC, in that time gap, that’s when PIE was spoken. Most Indo-European branches probably diverged from PIE around 3,500 to 3,000 BC, and what I mean by that is that various PIE tribes separated around that time, but of course it took some time before their PIE dialects took form and became the branches we know today. Proto-Anatolian and proto-Tocharian might be the only two branches that split earlier than 3,500 BC, but if we had more linguistic data on the poorly documented branches like Illyrian, Thracian, Phrygian and so on, perhaps the picture would change. Also some other IE branches that likely died out and never made it into the historical record, could also give us a better idea of the linguistic evolution of Indo-European languages.

In any case, in let’s say, 6,500 BC, there obviously was a proto-PIE language spoken somewhere in eastern Europe. It might have been very similar to classical PIE too. The reason why PIE is traditionally dated to between 4,500 BC and 2,500 BC, is simply because that era marks the dispersals of various Indo-European tribes, and that in itself set off the linguistic variation in Indo-European languages we have today. If no linguistic separation occurs, there’s no language family.

Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
I’m only stressing this because you said ‚of course’ as if it is an absolute certainty.
It’s not an absolute certainty that PIE was spoken in an exact 2000 years time span between 4,500 and 2,500 BC, but what is an absolute certainty is that an ancestral stage of PIE existed in 4,500 BC. We’re not talking about 45,000 BC here. Now, whether or not proto-Anatolian began diverging in 4,500 BC or 4,000 BC, I’m totally agnostic on that. Proto-Anatolian could for all I care have started diverging from PIE in 3,000 BC, and that PIE is slightly younger than what mainstream linguists believe. The point of the 4,500 to 2,500 BC estimation, is that somewhere in these 2,000 years, classical PIE was spoken, and that all the Indo-European languages we know of, diverged from PIE during this time gap; the actual period of Indo-European dispersals and linguistic diversification, could have been 1,500 years, or 1,800 years, or 1,200 years, or 800 years. But it was not more than a 2,000 years period, because otherwise, Indo-European languages wouldn’t be as homogeneous as they are, and we might be talking of Indo-European as a macro family instead of a language family, and so on.

There might even have been cousin or sister languages to PIE that split off in take say, 8,500 BC, but whether or not that happened, they never made it into the historical record. After all, there certainly were some Neolithic R1b migrations that made it not only into the Middle East but also all the way to Spain and sub-Saharan Africa; it’s very possible that these guys and their tribe spoke an early PIE-like language.

Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
The picture starts at starts at 4,500 BC
They wouldn’t have set that date, at 4,500 BC, if they didn’t think a PIE language existed at the time. Also I don’t doubt that Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic and Germanic in that picture, represent 2,500 BC at the latest.

Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
but where ‚Archaic PIE’ is labeled is 4,000 BC. And also the abstract of the study says 4,000 BC.
So you believe that the PIE language suddenly out of nowhere, came into existence in 4,000 BC, and that in 4,500 nothing like the PIE was spoken?

I’ve read some Old Swedish from 500 years ago, while it’s clearly an early variety of Swedish, it’s not modern Swedish. I probably wouldn’t understand much if it was spoken in front of me, but to say it isn’t Swedish is just preposterous. The King James Bible by the way, written in the early 1600s, is also a good case in point. 500 years is not much in linguistic change.

Quote Originally Posted by Arch Hades View Post
And while Anthony is not a linguist, Ringe is. It was a joint collaboration. So yeah, while you go around with a smug attitude acting like you know everything about this subject and you are the final authority I can easily find academics and linguists who disagree with you. That was really the only point of pasting this study.
They’re not disagreeing with me, because I base my view on their work (and other scholarly Indo-Europeanists like Mallory and Bryant). I suggest that you email them, and show them this thread, and ask them what they think about my arguments, and I’m sure they’ll tell you that this Elias dude is absolutely right on the money, and that Dienekes is a crackpot

My point was in regards to your post, is that „Racial Reality”-style arguments, such as „this study was published in 2015 so it automatically must be more accurate than a scholarly book published in 2007”, is not a valid argument as far as scientific accuracy is concerned. The study in question might be more accurate, or they both could be totally off base, because while linguistics is a real science, it belongs more in the soft sciences category compared to genetics (where the laws of physics apply more thoroughly compared to sound laws, because with genetics and especially ancient DNA, it’s a matter of biochemistry and carbon dating and so on).

Also, compared to you, I’m not only an Indo-Europeanist guru, but I’m also totally omniscient You’re a mental midget, straight up

EliasAlucard 2017-12-07, 19:17 #20

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
Ukrainian and especially Bulgarian Yamnaya do show early farmer admixture from the west, just like this M417 Sredny Stog guy, and yet some Corded Ware individuals don’t, including one that belongs to M417.
Okay so what does that mean, in your opinion?

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
I don’t think Samara and Kalmykia Yamnaya contributed anything to Corded Ware, because they’re mostly R1b-Z2103, and Corded Ware lacks it.
Well, they could have contributed some female autosomal DNA to Corded Ware.

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
It’s yet to be seen whether Andronovo and Scythians are from Corded Ware or, one way or another, from the same steppe population that gave rise to Corded Ware, because we have an Andronovo clone from Middle Bronze Age Bulgaria with R1a-Z93, and there’s no Z93 in any Corded Ware to date, so this guy may have come from the steppe rather than former Corded Ware territory.
If so, that means some R1a-M417+ Z283-, must have remained in Yamnaya, and eventually mutated Z93. I don’t know about that. If that were the case, we should expect to see more R1a diversity in modern Indo-Iranians, for example, M417+ but Z93- and Z283-, and something other than Z93 lineages. Also, the Bulgarian Z93 is probably good evidence that the Z93 lineage emerged in Europe, but for whatever reason wasn’t particularly successful in Europe, and had its highest reproductive success in Asia.

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
This wasn’t such a big area; nowhere near as big as Yamnaya. It just seems like there was a population living around the Don River which gave rise to or contributed to Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk, and then Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk kept in close touch anyway, so I don’t see any issues there.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying: Yamnaya is too big for a single language, unless horses are involved (in other words, higher mobility). So Sredny Stog and Khvalynks are better candidates for the earlier periods of PIE development.

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
By far the oldest R1a is from near the Dnieper in Ukraine (>10,000 calBP), and ANE was already present further west than that during the Upper Paleolithic, hence the R1b in Villabruna. So I wouldn’t focus too much on ANE.
So ANE wasn’t brought to Europe through Indo-European admixture?

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
PIE was first spoken around 5,000-4,000 BC based on the most reliable dates
Which are these?

Quote Originally Posted by Polako View Post
and this is probably about the time when the Yamnaya-like genotype started to form on the steppe, probably around the Don. Then the ancestors of the Anatolians moved out and Late PIE formed. Like I say, Yamnaya may have been the Late PIE population, or only one of them.
Well the thing is, what PIE represents is the last linguistic standard before various Indo-European speaking groups separated completely and evolved their own dialects (which later became branches). Of course in take say, 8,000 BC, there was a proto-PIE language, but no modern Indo-European languages separated this early in PIE development. The mainstream view among various Indo-Europeanists, is that PIE was spoken between 4,500 to 2,500 BC. So I’d say, around 3,500 BC is probably the „golden age” of „classical PIE”.

Abstract
R1a-M420 is one of the most widely spread Y-chromosome haplogroups; however, its substructure within Europe and Asia has remained poorly characterized. Using a panel of 16 244 male subjects from 126 populations sampled across Eurasia, we identified 2923 R1a-M420 Y-chromosomes and analyzed them to a highly granular phylogeographic resolution. Whole Y-chromosome sequence analysis of eight R1a and five R1b individuals suggests a divergence time of ∼25 000 (95% CI: 21 300–29 000) years ago and a coalescence time within R1a-M417 of ∼5800 (95% CI: 4800–6800) years. The spatial frequency distributions of R1a sub-haplogroups conclusively indicate two major groups, one found primarily in Europe and the other confined to Central and South Asia. Beyond the major European versus Asian dichotomy, we describe several younger sub-haplogroups. Based on spatial distributions and diversity patterns within the R1a-M420 clade, particularly rare basal branches detected primarily within Iran and eastern Turkey, we conclude that the initial episodes of haplogroup R1a diversification likely occurred in the vicinity of present-day Iran.

Distinguishing the co-ancestries of haplogroup G Y-chromosomes in the populations of Europe and the Caucasus
Article · May 2012 with 316 Reads
Siiri Rootsi, Peter A Underhill

Abstract
Haplogroup G, together with J2 clades, has been associated with the spread of agriculture, especially in the European context. However, interpretations based on simple haplogroup frequency clines do not recognize underlying patterns of genetic diversification. Although progress has been recently made in resolving the haplogroup G phylogeny, a comprehensive survey of the geographic distribution patterns of the significant sub-clades of this haplogroup has not been conducted yet. Here we present the haplogroup frequency distribution and STR variation of 16 informative G sub-clades by evaluating 1472 haplogroup G chromosomes belonging to 98 populations ranging from Europe to Pakistan. Although no basal G-M201* chromosomes were detected in our data set, the homeland of this haplogroup has been estimated to be somewhere nearby eastern Anatolia, Armenia or western Iran, the only areas characterized by the co-presence of deep basal branches as well as the occurrence of high sub-haplogroup diversity. The P303 SNP defines the most frequent and widespread G sub-haplogroup. However, its sub-clades have more localized distribution with the U1-defined branch largely restricted to Near/Middle Eastern and the Caucasus, whereas L497 lineages essentially occur in Europe where they likely originated. In contrast, the only U1 representative in Europe is the G-M527 lineage whose distribution pattern is consistent with regions of Greek colonization. No clinal patterns were detected suggesting that the distributions are rather indicative of isolation by distance and demographic complexities.European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication, 16 May 2012; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2012.86.

Corded Ware as an offshoot of Hungarian Yamnaya (Anthony 2017)

David W. Anthony has just posted a new paper at his Academia.edu page titled Archaeology and Language: Why Archaeologists Care about the Indo-European Problem (see here).

It’s not only an interesting discussion about why the search for the Indo-European homeland is still such a big deal, but also a useful, almost up to date, summary of the fascinating stuff that ancient DNA has revealed about the genetic history of Europe, with a special focus on the origin of the Corded Ware people, who are generally accepted to be the first Indo-European-speaking population of Northern Europe.

Now, I say it’s an almost up to date summary, because Anthony seems fairly certain that the Corded Ware people were descendants of the Yamnaya people, rather than just their close relatives. He uses archaeological and ancient DNA data to argue that Yamnaya migrants moved from the North Pontic steppe to the eastern Carpathian Basin (present-day Hungary), and then onto what is now southern Poland to give rise to the proto-Corded Ware population.

I probably would’ve said this was a highly plausible scenario before I saw the ancient DNA results from the latest preprint of Mathieson et al. 2017, an ancient genomics paper in the works focusing on Southeastern Europe (see here). But now that I’ve seen those results, I feel that Anthony’s proposal might be outdated.

One of the samples in that preprint is from a pre-Yamnaya Eneolithic burial on the northern edge of North Pontic steppe, in what is now eastern Ukraine, labeled Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561. This individual not only strongly resembles the Corded Ware people in terms of genome-wide genetic structure, but also belongs to Y-haplogroup R1a-M417, which is a paternal marker probably no older than the Eneolithic and intimately associated with the Corded Ware expansion. Currently, as far as I can see, he’s by far the most likely candidate in the ancient DNA record to belong to a proto-Corded Ware population.

Keep in mind also that not a single instance of R1a-M417 has yet been found among a wide range of prehistoric individuals from the Carpathian Basin. On the other hand, Olalde et al. 2017 (see here) did manage to catch one Early Bronze Age (EBA) Bell Beaker from the region belonging to R1b-Z2103, which is the paternal marker currently most strongly associated with Yamnaya.

Below is a map of Central and Eastern Europe ca. 3000-2000 BCE from Anthony’s paper, edited by me to show the burial location of Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561. If we assume that his descendants or close relatives were the proto-Corded Ware population, then looking at this map, it seems unlikely to me that they would’ve taken the Carpathian Basin route before expanding into Northern Europe. Rather, I’d say that they would’ve fanned out across the north directly from the steppe, perhaps along those northward-pointing river valleys? And I suspect that they may have still been a pre-Yamnaya group as they migrated out of the steppe, just as Yamnaya was forming somewhere to the east.

But hey, Anthony might be right, and I might be way off. Indeed, perhaps Anthony based his theory, to an extent, on soon to be published Yamnaya samples from the Carpathian Basin? If such genomes have been sequenced, and at least one belongs to R1a-M417, then it’s game over as far as the origin of the Corded Ware people is concerned, and I’ll welcome the surprise.

EastPole said…
@Matt
“I also don’t really tend to think the Corded Ware proportions of EEF+WHG+Steppe are so unusual a combination to only happen once, so I would not place too much confidence on Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 representing an early proto-Corded Ware pop.”

Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 with R1a-M417 comes from Dereivka culture where first corded ware pottery and stone battle-axes were used. It was a proto-Corded Ware culture IMO.
December 18, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Davidski said…
@EastPole
Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 is not from Dereivka or even from a site associated with the Dereivka culture. He’s from Alexandria near the Donets River. Take a look at this map.

The coordinates for this sample in Mathieson et al. are way off. The authors had the wrong Alexandria, but the mistake is now being fixed.

Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 is from Sredny Stog or a related archaeological culture.

@John Johnson
In regards to Anthony’s patron-client theory, he may have been right to some degree, although also keep in mind that he was forced to work in a heavily anti-migrationist climate, so I guess he had to come up with some way for Indo-European languages to spread without migrations. Apart from that, everyone makes mistakes, or at least doesn’t get things exactly right, so using terms like air head is a bit too much.

@Karl_K
Right, but irrespective of any geographic arguments, if there’s no R1a-M417 in Hungarian Yamnaya after a good number have been sampled, then the Carpathian Basin route will look like a dud.
December 19, 2017 at 12:28 AM

EastPole said…
@Davidski
“Ukraine_Eneolithic I6561 is not from Dereivka or even from a site associated with the Dereivka culture. He’s from Alexandria near the Donets River.”

Alexandria/Oleksandriya is Dereivka culture:

“Corded ornamentation was observed for the first time in the steppe area between the Dnieper and the Don rivers in the Sredniy Stog culture monuments of the early Eneolithic Age. Artefact ornamentation was represented by imprints of a coiled cord [Kotova 2008]. Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation appeared in the Middle Eneolithic in the monuments of the Dereivka culture and the lower layer of the Mykhailivka settlement.”

Classic ‘corded’ ornamentation was also found in Alexandria/Oleksandriya where we now have R1a-M417 which is the site of Dereivka culture:

Chetan said…
@John You said „considering the implications that the CWC has for the development of Kentum IE languages”

But I don’t think CW was the progenitor of the IE Centum languages except possibly pre Germanic. Both Italic and Celtic languages were spread by the Bell Beakers which most likely came from Yamanaya Hungary. Pre Greek came from the steppes later and not in any way related to the CW. The languages which came from the CW culture would have been pre-Balto Slavic and pre Germanic but of course pre-Germanic was then overlaid with a Bell Beaker kentum superstrate.

We don’t know which dialects were initially spread by the Corded Ware culture (centum or satem?). That would require us to know the precise time of satemization. But since Satemization seems to have started from the Indo-Iranian dialects in which it is complete, I presume that initially all the CW cultures spoke centum dialects and later only the eastern part ancestral to Balto-Slavic underwent satemization.
December 19, 2017 at 12:29 PM

John Johnson said…
@ Chetan
I think you pretty much answered your own question at the end. Yeah I don’t think you can separate CWC from any type of implications it may have had or related to regarding Kentum IE languages. Especially given its westward location and overall positioning.

Despite my sharp criticisms of Anthony regarding the archaeology of the North European Plane around the time of the CWC, he does in his book make an interesting observation about Greek and Indo-Iranian revolving around the common phrase „Imperishable Fame” which persists in heroic poetry of Indo-Aryan and Mycenean Greek traditions. He dated Proto-Greek’s split from the steppe at around the time of the Catacomb culture in order to account for why both groups having this same concept/term in their poetry – „Imperishable Fame”. So with that reasoning, you’re looking at 2800–2200 BC for this to have occurred. Its brought into question just how complex IE migrations may have been in relation to their proper linguistic developments.

Satemization as I always heard and understood, and you even pointed out, occurs much later in regards to IE linguistic time depth theory among Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic is actually incompletely ‚Satemized’ as I’ve always understood. So in theory, Balto-Slavs straddled the early Satem and Kentum IE realms in prehistory in order for this to have occurred.

For a while now, Satemization has had a date of 2000 BC or so to have full crystalized among I guess pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian (or Proto-Indo-Iranian?). Relevant cultures were always cited as Andronovo, Sintashta etc. for where this would have occurred but this may be different now as if I recall correctly from reading here its Srubna and Poltavka cultures that have the R1a lineage related to present day Indo-Iranian people.

PIE as I came to know, had velars more like Kentum IE languages in that they were ‚hard’ ones whereas Satem shows a softening of those very sounds. So theoretically, Kentum IE languages preserve more archaic velars than the Proto-Indo-Iranian and would have preserved such by splitting away, in this case and theoretically further west from where-ever the Satem group was firmly entrenched somewhere in Eurasia.
December 19, 2017 at 12:52 PM

Relevant cultures were always cited as Andronovo, Sintashta etc. for where this would have occurred but this may be different now as if I recall correctly from reading here its Srubna and Poltavka cultures that have the R1a lineage related to present day Indo-Iranian people.

Andronovo, Sintashta and Srubna all carry R1a-Z93, which is the R1a clade that dominates in South Asia. One of the Poltavka samples, a western-shifted outlier, also belongs to this clade.

The main potential complication is that South Asians are better modeled as part Yamnaya and Poltavka than the above, and to date, Yamnaya and Poltavka samples belong to R1b. But this might be resolved in a couple of ways when more data come in, for example…

Chetan said…
@David What do think about this theory? There was a north-south split between R1a- z280 and z93. That is, R1a-Z645 was native to the Pontic Steppes and its subclade z280 either migrated north with or spread with the CWC. That would put z93 on the steppes after 3000 BC from where it could migrate to India and Greece (Mycenaean). The only problem I see with it is that there are no / very few R1a samples from Yamnaya steppe culture. And some z93 occurs in CW as well isn’t it?
December 20, 2017 at 5:31 AM

Davidski said…
@Chetan
You’re making too many incorrect assumptions. For example, just because a paternal marker of an elite group is now very rare in a population, doesn’t mean that this elite group did not contribute significant genome-wide ancestry to that population. And there’s no Z93 in Corded Ware sampled to date. Z93 appears to dominate the entire Eurasian steppe, at least among the Kurgan elites, from about the Middle Bronze Age. This happens either due to migration onto the steppe from the forest steppe, via chariot complex groups like Abashevo, and/or due to a set of Z93-rich clans taking over the steppe at an elite level.
December 20, 2017 at 9:56 AM

Chetan said…
@Davidsky So do you think R1a M417 diversification took place in the CW forest steppe culture and a group of z93s migrated back to the steppes replacing the R1b lineages?
December 20, 2017 at 10:24 AM

Davidski said…
Don’t know yet. Need to see more samples.
December 20, 2017 at 10:27 AM

Rob said…
@ Dave
„Well, it’s a fact that almost 100% of the R1a in the world today comes from a population that lived on the Pontic-Caspian steppe.”

Sure, I too think that modern Z645 expanded from the steppe, or at least the forest -steppe. That was not my point.

„On the other hand, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that „people moved on and off the steppe all the time”.

Yes and no. I don’t propose that random, distant populations just turned up all the time. On the other hand, the herding of their animals required movements between summer and winter pastures, which took the to different parts of the steppe, or around it. This facilitated exchange with different group. Moreover, the patterns were different for every group. Yamnaya, Majkop, Balkan pastoralists, Catacomb, and distinct sub-groups like East Manych had different pace of mobility and herding practices. It meant that they were probably distinctive clan groups. At some point, it seems, they also went on distant migrations as far as Afansyevo (which I still find a little mind boggling).

BB-L151 and CWC-M417 are 2 offshoots of this process of interaction since 4500 BC at least, distinctively steppic. My gut feeling is that CWC went around the Carpathians perhaps (although difficult to trace objectively) and BB actually the way Anthony above described, although you could rotate that 90′ A/C, and have BB up the Danube and CWC from Tisza into south Poland.
December 20, 2017 at 1:39 PM